Oh ffs, get over yourself Elon. It's just a job. People have lives, they're not your servants. Despite what you might want, nowadays nobody has to work like they're in a 19th-century mill. #deadbirdsite
They're getting paid an awful lot of money. Time to work for it.
@amerika I'm not saying they shouldn't. But working long hours for more money should be a right, not an obligation. I'm sure you don't mean to say that workers' rights are a bad thing?
Also, we might note that worker's rights have been an utter disaster.
Remember why trains got replaced by trucks?
Or wonder why the NHS is always broke?
Maybe even how lots of jobs went offshore and to illegal aliens?
Thank a union.
Workers are worth what they produce. You treat the good ones well.
Sometimes, it's crunch time, and you're at the office quite a bit.
If I limited my workday every day to 8 hrs I'd never get anywhere.
@amerika Well, I think we have a fundamental difference of opinion there! It seems obvious to me that unions have done immeasurable good *for workers*, which is kinda the point of them. If they've also made it harder for companies to function, I have no problem with that. Without legislation to even the playing field, it's ludicrous to rely on the beneficence of bosses to "treat the good ones well", as you put it. Call me an idealist if you like, but I believe minimum wage, maternity and paternity rights, pension provision, holiday and sickness entitlements etc. are of great benefit to society. And also, you might argue that the hypothetical fast food employee you mention provides a far more useful function than a twitter employee by feeding people (one cannot live on tweets alone) and the pay discrepancy is much greater than it ought to be. But, hey, maybe I have some deep-rooted anti-meritocracy feelings going on :)
@LexiconDevil @book who is "they"?
> the system is failing people
You can't fail at something that isn't your job in the first place. "The system" isn't your dad, it's not there to put a roof over your head and tuck you in at night.
The job of the system, as I see it, is to make sure that the good get rewarded and the bad get yeeted.
Sort of like what Musk is doing at Twitter: keep the good engineers who recognize that in times of transition 80-hour weeks are part of the job description, throw out the people who were showing up twice a year and getting upper middle class salaries for that.
Re twitter employees
Funny how they all claim to love and care about the company that 'they built', yet bulk at the idea of actually showing up at the office, or putting forth extra effort to make the ownership transition, and new features, go smoothly.
They're all noodle boys
@MtnStateNomad @book @karlequin
I tend to think so.
Part of being on a team is giving the extra effort when required.
This is not business as usual for Twitter; they are in massive transition.
I'm sure they think they should be able to call the shots, since 'they built it'
Nevermind the capital and networking someone else put forth to make a place for them to build at
Short sighted worker mentality with no grasp of what it takes to make things happen. Just their own miniscule roll Ina much larger system.
The tiny gear thinks it is the engine
@MtnStateNomad @book @karlequin
That's a good synopsis.
Human narcissism is everywhere until transcended.
If you increase the associated costs of employing people, you will remove people from the workforce from the bottom up. The least capable, least intelligent, least diligent, least worthy, will be priced out. You are, paradoxically, the oppressor, for fighting for these "rights."
@book @amerika I couldn't disagree more. You would remove companies from the least ethical up, and if there's a need for the services those companies provide then the space would quickly be filled by those able to pay a decent living wage, which everyone ought to be able to enjoy in a civilised society, regardless of skillset, disability or other demographic. It's obvious to me that my more socialist viewpoint is not something that is ever going to sit well with you, so I'm not going to discuss this any further. It is refreshing to step out of my twitter echo-chamber, but I have more important things to do than carry on with this conversation! Thank you for your input, though.
The "ought" here is questionable to me. I think we need the most competent doing the work, and if others are less competent, they should be rewarded less. This way we all benefit from incompetence.
Of course I oppose socialism; I saw the Wall. Did you?
This has always been the crisis of minimum wage, as well as other things.
Migrants take all of the lower jobs now because everyone else got priced out.
Taxes go up, prices go up. Wages go up, prices go up. There is no free lunch.
The workers have more rights under my model. They get rewarded for doing good work.
Trying to make the rest of us subsidize those who are not performing just means death by parasite.
Exactly. These things destroy economic health.
Prices go up and people cannot afford to live.
But they got the higher salaries, how can this be?
Answer: the cost does not go away, it just gets passed on to all of us.
This misses the point: companies need to function for workers to get paid.
When you destroy that function, the jobs go away. Look at all the towns that died when the railroads vanished.
"Rights" are great if you can fund them, but limited resources versus infinite need ends like the Soviet Union.
I am not a meritocracy fan. I am however a fan of demonstrated competence, since we all benefit from this.
Consider Twitter. Musk fires three-quarters of the employees, makes the company more profitable, and also makes Twitter more useful as a public space.
Who wins? Everyone.
Who loses? Temporarily, the employees who have to find another job.
Now look at unions. They get temporary increases for the workers, but then the jobs go away.
This is why union membership in the private sector has been declining.
hope they dont have any bullshit anti-competition clauses preventing this
I see a lot of "qualified" people, and very few who can do anything that was not in a textbook.
This is not unique to IT.
IT has the advantage of not being understood by management, even in IT, so they tend to lard up with layers of people.
You end up with lots of people standing around unsure of what they should be doing.
After awhile, they start taking long lunches... Monday through Thursday.
i can't read musk's mind on what exactly he plans to do, but if he's really making a best effort to go for something like this and respect worker conditions, i'm for it. it's true i'm still concerned on his public attitude around it, but he's also rich enough not to care and maybe it's all for theatrics
we'll see what he does with it
Little fuckups mean very little on the long timeline. He will figure it out and get it going. It's not rocket science (heh).
Most non-profits are basically wealth redistribution schemes.
The more layers of management you have, the less anyone knows what is going on.
It seems to me that most firms are executive-heavy.
At some point, one wants to stack up some cash for retirement, but what people actually need is usually less than they think.
Luxuries are of doubtful value because eventually they become a goal in themselves.
Heartily agreed. I consider homesteading a subset of this.
its gonna be interesting for sure
This is why speculators run the markets. Their goal is not long-term, but finding some schmuck to offload the garbage to.
My guess is that Musk demystified Twitter.
If viewed as merely a technological service, it is not that complex and does not require a large staff.
I hope it is simply run for high function and open discussion.
My prediction is that eventually it will join the Fediverse or something like it.
Decentralization both (a) allows competition and (b) keeps that competition somewhat managed.
Like taxi medallions.
The backlash to Gab was from an earlier time. I think if they federated now, things would be different.
...or fierce competition. They offer sort of the same service, in the end (social media where you can use gamer words).
Twitter on the Fediverse would be somewhat amazing.
It would still be the place for those who want easy, but the rest of us could be separate while participating.
i just wish google would have forced modern standards on email so we can cut off most of this shitty "backward compatibility" that makes mail hard to use
Given what I think of most of Google's "improvements"... pls no.
Too many consumers not enough producers. This situation always means that everyone loses, where promoting the competent means that everyone wins.
In other words, your higher salary does not mean much if the plant closes.
To my mind, "rights" means stuff like speech and choice.
Everything else must be earned because otherwise you get a Soviet Union situation.
>Call me an idealist if you like, but I believe minimum wage, maternity and paternity rights, pension provision, holiday and sickness entitlements etc. are of great benefit to society.
Tell that to all the people it makes economically unemployable.